


For the Last Time

by estelraca



Category: The Broken Earth Series - N. K. Jemisin
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-14 19:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13014624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/pseuds/estelraca
Summary: Tonkee and Hjarka have watched worlds end, time and time again.  At least this time they are together as they face it.





	For the Last Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [olio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olio/gifts).



> I absolutely adore the Broken Earth series and how complicated everyone is in it. I hope I've managed to capture a little bit of that for you. Have a wonderful holiday season!

_For the Last Time_

_This is the way the world ends._

Tonkee doesn't remember who she first heard muttering the phrase. Was it Essun during their desperate flight away from the ash, towards what they had both hoped would be a semblance of answers? The questions they were both asking were impossible to answer, of course. Essun wanted to know how a father could murder his child, how a daughter could disappear, how the child that you hold in your arms and love so dearly could become something else entirely.

Tonkee wanted to know why the world was the way it was.

_This is the way the world ends._

They all said it at some point, she's certain. Ykka. Essun. Hoa. Alabaster. All of those who knew _more_ , even if it was only a little bit—they all said that this was the way the world ended.

Alabaster knew it was ending, of course, because he was the one who broke it. It had taken Tonkee longer than it should to piece that together, and she had actually held her tongue for once, knowing that a battle between orogenes and stills would benefit no one. And there had to be a _reason_ , right? No one breaks the world just for the fun of watching it burn.

Essun had watched the world break too many times to count. Every time she watched her people's blood—fellow children, her _own_ children—soak into the ground, the world ended. And every time it did, someone or something made her go on.

Not this time, though. This time she is gone, the world ended forever, her body a monument to how the world is _not_ broken—to how, at the end of it, Essun chose to trust her child, and her child didn't disappoint.

Does he understand that, the silent stone-eater who comes to stand by her corpse like a matching monument? Does he know that the world ended a little bit better this time than it has in the past?

Tonkee doesn't know, and as she continues to dig into the city of wonders, the city of dreams, the city of magic and mystery and might, she begins to doubt that this time is really any better at all.

XXX

_This is the way the world ends._

It's the largest, most incredible deadciv ruin that Tonkee has ever had the pleasure of stumbling across. If her answers are anywhere—the answers to everything, to why their world is so broken, to why it _ends_ so often—they will be here.

Tonkee never considered that she might not want the answers she receives.

They had so much. Even just casually walking down the street makes it obvious that the people who built this civilization had more than any person living now could ever dream of, and they wasted it all. Lights come on without coaxing, without orogeny or combustion or hydroelectic or any other sort of energy source that Tonkee can find. Doors open by themselves. Their structures are built of a material unlike anything Tonkee has ever seen before, something that seems more organic than crafted.

Millions of people must have lived in this city, once. Millions of people must have lived and loved and laughed and _learned_. What kind of schools did they have, these people who could craft transports to take them to the center of the earth? These people who could fling away the _moon—_ and oh, it is strange to see it there, becoming larger and larger in the night sky with each day until suddenly it decides to become smaller and smaller—what did they teach their children?

What _didn't_ they teach their children, and how many generations have paid the price for their oversight?

XXX

_This is the way the world ends._

Tonkee finds the garden when she's trying to trace what might have been used as a power source for the city long ago. It's not the first slaughterhouse she's found—she's walked among the bodies of the dead Guardians, their corpses transmuted into beautiful sculptures of the human form by the little pieces of the Evil Earth that once lived in their heads. Every facial expression is preserved for... not eternity. Eternity is too long. But until the world ends in a way that destroys this city-sized tomb, the Guardians will stand as glittering statues, a complement to Essun's stone form. Compared to that, compared to the twisted faces of confusion and fear, the field of vines should be pleasant. All of these corpses are long desiccated, after all, flesh stripped away to leave only expressionless bone. If it weren't for how everything is connected to the rest of the city, it might be possible for Tonkee to mistake the field as some kind of strange graveyard.

She tries to convince herself it is, for a half hour or so. But Tonkee has never been terribly good at lying, either to herself or others. She is a woman, no matter what the body she was born into. She is an innovator, no matter who wishes to teach her and learn from her and accept her and who doesn't.

And the people whose bones litter the field weren't buried there, laid respectfully to rest. They were tied there, trussed and bound and used, as the orogene children deemed too powerful and unstable are trussed and bound and broken in her homeland.

She vomits, just once. It makes her angry that her body betrays her like that. The truth isn't something that can be denied or cleansed by wasting precious calories. This beautiful city, this city of wonders, this city that should hold all the answers, was once powered by the bodies of people who, in death, could be just like Tonkee and Essun and all the rest.

This city is their predecessor, and despite watching the world end around them, her people learned nothing at all from what came before.

XXX

_This is the way the world ends._

They recorded everything. Tonkee is certain of that, though she can make precious little use of what she finds. The records that flash at her from consoles that should have long since died; the pictures written in semi-living material on the walls; the actual books that she finds; all of them contain vast quantities of knowledge, she's certain, and none of them mean anything at all.

_This is the way the world ends._

She finds a single book that she can read. It's a journal, and presenting it to Nassun reveals that it was Alabaster's. It answers some questions, but it raises a thousand more, and Tonkee finds herself wanting to howl in animal frustration as she struggles to find answers in a place that undoubtedly holds them and hoards them, a dragon with secrets and suspicions for company.

This is the way the world ended, perhaps for the first time, and she doesn't think she will ever be able to figure out exactly how it happened.

XXX

_This is the way the world ends._

Hjarka rides her hard, the woman's hands burying themselves in Tonkee's hair as Hjarka hisses out words of pleasure. Tonkee doesn't have the sense to use words. Everything has been burned away by this mini-apocalypse, leaving only glorious sensation and the sight of her lover's face in the dimness.

When she's done Hjarka collapses next to Tonkee, breathing hard. Tonkee manages to lift her arm and slide it around Hjarka, holding her lover close. The place where they're staying—the place Alabaster stayed once, the only place that holds a semblance of normalcy, the only place with food—makes strange noises around them.

"So." Hjarka looks at Tonkee, her eyes glittering in the light of the Earth-cursed _moon_ outside. Her teeth flash, sharp points in an expression that isn't quite a smile or a grimace. "Does this help at all to bring you back to us?"

Tonkee blinks at Hjarka, still too lost in waves of pleasure to parse the question properly. Hjarka is always able to do this—to make Tonkee lose track of everything but the physical joy. "I haven't gone anywhere."

"You have." Hjarka's hand moves to lie against Tonkee's cheek. "You've been gone since a day or so after we got here. And since there's no immediate danger, nothing that's going to come kill us—unless the Stone Eaters decide to, and fuck knows one more still won't matter against them—I figured it was all right to let you do some mourning. Precious little opportunity to do it during a Season, after all. But we're getting to the point where we need you back here. So. Did this help?"

"I'm not..." Tonkee gives her head a little shake. "I'm fine. I don't need any special treatment. No need to set aside any special mourning time. Who am I mourning, anyway? Essun? She's the one who cut off my arm."

Hjarka just continues to look at her.

Tonkee's the one who looks away first. "Maybe Lerna, I suppose. He did manage to save the arm, after all. Arm-cutter and arm-healer. But like you said, mourning doesn't have a place in a Season. Any stone lorist would say it's weakness to let someone carry on like that. Dangerous to the comm."

"Any stone lorist who found their way here would be lost." Hjarka pushes strands of Tonkee's sweat-slicked hair away from her eyes. "Stone lore doesn't tell us what we need to know about this place. Not any more. But _you_ , my clever Innovator... maybe you can."

Tonkee stares into Hjarka's eyes, feeling something cold well up inside her. "Maybe. It's mostly guess work, though, and the answers from the guesses aren't very pretty."

"That's part of why I don't like asking so many questions. Answers very rarely are what we want them to be." Hjarka sighs, sitting up on her side of the bed. "Have you found some, though?"

"I think..." Tonkee hesitates, then curls herself closer to Hjarka. "We know what Essun told us. What the Stone Eater told her, at least I think. We know this is where Father Earth was angered. This is where the world was broken—where the Moon was lost, and I feel like such a useless astronomist trying to figure out how it works now. And some of what I've found..."

Hjarka buries her fingers in Tonkee's hair, massaging down until she's touching Tonkee's scalp.

Tonkee draws a deep breath. "This city is amazing. I don't have to tell you that—you've got eyes, you can see. The technology, the things they could do... I want to understand it. I _could_ , I think, with enough time. But I think I already understand part that I don't want to."

Still Hjarka is silent, giving Tonkee time to find words, to say what she needs to say.

Tonkee sighs, burying her head against Hjarka's thigh. "They used people. As... as a power source, I think. I can see the outline of how they did it, though not all the bits that made it move. All of this wonder, all of this amazing world, and they powered it with people. Just like we used people like Essun and Ykka and Alabaster to keep the world still and safe. It's... it's this _disease_ that we have, I think. People. We aren't content unless there's an us and them, and the _them_ are very firmly beneath us. And it's stupid and I hate it and..."

Tonkee finds herself unable to keep talking, the words cut off abruptly by tears she hadn't known she was holding back.

Hjarka doesn't seem surprised. She hauls Tonkee into a sitting position, swiping at Tonkee's tears with her hand. "You're certain that's what was going on?"

"Or near enough as makes no difference." Tonkee shudders. "I just... all of this, we did all of this, we lost Lerna and risked so much, to try to save the world. To try to give our people a _chance_. But are we really better? Look at what our comm has done to survive. And I know, it's a Season, everything's rough and vicious, but... if Essun hadn't stopped them, Castrima would have turned on the orogenes. Most of them are just _children_ , and they would have turned on them."

"We need them. But they frighten us." Hjarka bares her pointed teeth again. "And so we act stupidly around them."

"And now we won't need them." Tonkee shudders. "Now there's no Guardians. No Fulcrum—and maybe that's for the best, it was awful, some of the things I heard they did. But it wasn't the Fulcrum that killed Nassun's brother."

"No." Hjarka leans forward, her face suddenly close to Tonkee's. "But it wasn't ever going to be the Fulcrum that saved him. It's going to be people like us, and people like Essun, and people like Ykka—people willing to try. Willing to change. And willing to fight."

"It's just..." Tonkee draws a shuddering breath. "I've always liked working as an Innovator. The things I worked with, the theories I came up with—stuff either worked or it didn't. Gave accurate predictions or it didn't. Made _sense_ or it didn't. But people... people aren't like that. We've _never_ been like that. Even when we had the tools to make wonders like _this_..."

"You wanted answers. You've found them." Hjarka squeezes Tonkee's hands tight. "But perhaps the questions you were asking weren't the ones you _really_ wanted to ask."

Perhaps not. Perhaps there had been hubris in the questions that Tonkee wanted answered. If they could manage some of what the deadcivs had, after all... she's done well enough managing to find sources of estrogen, but she's certain it was easier in some of the oldest deadcivs. Better medicine. Better food production. Better _everything_. And yes, it was breakable. The fact that it is all gone now provides enough proof that it's breakable. But if they could find it and _improve_ it...

"I do miss her." The words roll off Tonkee's tongue in a tangled clutter, barely comprehensible. "It's silly. I spent so long sniping at her, about my arm, about... but I miss her. I knew her when she was a child, even if it was only briefly. And we traveled together, and she saved my life... not just from the stupid Evil Earth fragment, from others in the comm, too, I know that. I know I'm not always easy to get along with or understand. I get wrapped up in my work, and I forget how to talk to people, but she... she tried anyway."

Hjarka takes Tonkee's hands, kissing the knuckles of each.

"And it shouldn't have been this way. It shouldn't have come down to Essun and her daughter. Everything— _everything—_ resting in a child's hands." Tonkee shudders. "And I know she wouldn't want to be thought of like that. I know I didn't, when I was a child searching for my own answers, my own way. But she was— _is—_ nothing but a child."

Perhaps it's the stillness here, at the far side of the world. The lack of people and activity leave too much time for thinking—too much time for pondering.

Hjarka leans in close again, her lips ghosting against Tonkee's. "There are lots of things that shouldn't be. Including that I don't want to starve to death here, not if we can help it."

"I—what?" Tonkee's eyes widen in alarm.

"We're running lower than I'd like on supplies, and there's been no sign of the Stone Eaters." Hjarka makes a rumbling growl deep in her chest. "And the nutrient balance of what we _do_ have isn't the greatest. That's why I need you to be here. To mourn _here_ , because I'm no Innovator, to figure out how to salvage the situation."

"Well why didn't you _say_ so?" Tonkee pulls Hjarka in close, kissing her fiercely. Her tongue slips on Hjarka's filed teeth, and a tinge of copper floods both their mouths.

Metal, the child of the Evil Earth, and perhaps its inclusion in all their bodies should have been warning enough about how complicated their people can be.

Hjarka smiles as she pulls back a bit. "Does that mean I can count on you?"

Tonkee lies down, pulling Hjarka on top of her. "That means I'm not ready to give up anything yet."

XXX

_This is the way the world ends_ , in famine and malnutrition and despair. Thus says the stone-lore about a poorly prepared comm, and it's hard to be less prepared than they are.

Except none of them are ready to give up quite yet. Or, rather, Tonkee and Hjarka aren't ready to give up yet. Nassun spends more time than is probably good for her standing at the side of her mother's corpse. The sole surviving Guardian, Schaffa, spends his time either trailing Nassun or staring blankly into space.

Tonkee studies what they have to work with and devises several stop-gap measures to improve their food supply. She's especially proud of the seaweed cultivation, though she suspects after long enough they'll all be tired of eating it.

It's not going to be enough to save them forever. It probably won't even keep them going for another year. But it will buy them a few months, at least, and in that time they will search for other answers.

Tonkee will chart the course of the moon as best she can, and continue her exploration and excavation of this deadciv city of wonders, and perhaps, just perhaps, they will find a way to put off the end of the world for a little bit longer.

XXX

_This is the way the world ends_ , with a child sitting at her dead mother's side.

Essun's body would be a beautiful work of art in other contexts. So would Nassun's hand, broken off to lie primly beneath Essun's missing limb. Knowing what they are, though, knowing the cost, there is something more terrible than beautiful about them.

Tonkee holds her small collection of flowers close to her chest. She hasn't brought some for Essun yet, though she thinks most of the others have—can see a blanket of flowers spread out around Essun's stone feet. When she was exploring a new part of the city, though, she found these flowers—small, red and orange, like tongues of flame licking up from the green. They reminded her of Essun, and so she gathered a handful to bring with her.

She hadn't expected Nassun to be here. She should have, really. Nassun doesn't go far from her mother's side unless she's trying to coax Schaffa into a little more life.

What does one say to a child who killed their mother?

What does one say to a child who could have broken the world?

The same thing one would say to anybody else, Tonkee decides, and so she strides forward and places her flowers atop those already gathered.

"I miss your mother." The words feel inadequate as they drop into the silence. "I bet you do, too."

Nassun is quiet for so long that Tonkee begins to think the girl won't answer her. Fidgeting with the way the flowers are arranged gives Tonkee an excuse to linger a few extra moments, but she's still turning to leave when Nassun finally speaks.

"She broke my hand."

Nassun's eyes flick from Essun's ravaged form to her own hand lying in the bed of flowers to Tonkee's face and back to Essun's form.

"When I was little." Nassun closes her eyes, voice falling to a whisper, and there is something awful in the way she phrases it—as though she isn't little anymore, as though anything that could be called little has been burned out of her. "She broke my hand to make me prove I could control my orogeny even if I was hurt."

Tonkee presses her lips together before blurting out the truth. The truth has always been her refuge, even if it is sometimes a poor friend and companion. "They taught her that at the Fulcrum. They would do things like that to the children—break their hands, other little acts of cruelty that were supposedly kindness."

Nassun's remaining hand is clutching tight to her shirt, and the girl rocks gently in place. "They were awful places. That's why I destroyed it. Why I would destroy it again. Why I had said I'd destroy _everything_ , but in the end I couldn't."

This child has the power to break worlds. Even now, when the greatest danger has passed, Tonkee has no doubt that it would be a simple thing for Nassun to destroy them all. And what can they say to counter that? How do you tell a child that the world won't end when you've seen it happen a hundred times in one small way or another? "The Fulcrums were wrong. But good things happened there, too. Like your mother and Alabaster meeting."

A look of confusion flits across Nassun's face, and Tonkee remembers that this child never met Alabaster. Then understanding dawns and Nassun tilts her head, looking like a small bird for just a moment. "The man who wrote the journal?"

"The man who wrote the journal." The man who mourned here first, before he accepted the Stone Eater's proposition to break the world. "He and your mother..."

"But he died, right?" A thin smile touches Nassun's mouth. "They all die. My brother died. My father died. My m-mother died. Schaffa is _dying_."

Tears begin to run down Nassun's face, though her expression holds more rage than sorrow at the moment.

Tonkee hunkers down next to the child, eyes fixed on Essun's corpse, though she keeps Essun's daughter in the corner of her vision. "Schaffa isn't dead yet."

"He fell today. Just trying to walk with me." Nassun closes her eyes, though it doesn't stop the flow of tears. "He was so graceful once. He could kill so quickly, so easily. And now he falls walking down the street."

"But he's still here. With you." Tonkee reaches towards Essun's corpse, though she doesn't actually touch the smooth stone. "Your mother... when she knew she had to come here, there was a group of us that came with her. Me. Hjarka. Lerna. Despite everything that happened, everything she lost, your mother didn't have to face this alone."

"Lerna?" Nassun opens her eyes, a mixture of fury and despair in them.

"He died. A Stone Eater killed him while we were being transported." Tonkee gives her head a shake. "But we knew him. He loved your mother. For a little bit, they had something good."

"And that makes up for the fact that they lost it? That he died? That she died? That _everyone_ dies?" The girl's tears are coming faster now. "That makes it all right to let everyone die slowly instead of finishing it off?"

"It makes it..." Tonkee isn't the one who should be having this conversation. Tonkee isn't good with people. She never has been, and though she's learned—through Castrima, through Essun, through Hjarka—she doubts it will ever come naturally. "We've seen the world end. Felt it end, for you orogenes. But we also... we see it start again. You found Schaffa. Your mother found us. Does that make up for what's lost? For all the endings? I don't know. There aren't good weights to measure these things by. But I think, for the people who have watched the world end and start..."

"Have you lost anyone?" Nassun's gaze is fierce, direct, penetrating.

Tonkee swallows and then speaks as bluntly as usual. "I was kicked out of my family. Kicked out of the university. Kicked out of a few comms, too. For various reasons. Hurt differently each time. It isn't pain like what you've been through—what your mother went through—but that's what I've lost."

She has lost friends. Even though she isn't good with people, Castrima was home, and there is less of Castrima now than there was to start with.

She has lost Essun, and no matter how many times she says _arm-cutter_ she will never forget how easily Essun accepted her—as a child, on the road, when Tonkee was her usual difficult self in Castrima.

She may lose more. Their existence here is tenuous. Despite Tonkee throwing herself into trying to find ways for them to survive, she thinks in a few months they will run out of food. Unless the Stone Eaters come or they learn how to power the vehimals, that will be the end.

"Would you have ended it?" Nassun's tears seem to be passing. Her gaze is fixed on her mother's corpse again, her head resting on her crossed arms.

"No." Tonkee doesn't hesitate. "I can't learn why the world is the way it is—can't study all this deadciv has to offer—if I let the world end."

"Plus your lady." Nassun sniffles.

"Yes." Tonkee turns the affirmation over in her mouth. "Plus there's Hjarka."

"I don't know if I made the right choice." Nassun closes her eyes again. "But I'm glad to see someone happy that the world hasn't ended yet."

They sit in silence for a few more minutes, and then Tonkee slips away.

She tells the others a bit of what Nassun said—just enough that they can approach the girl if they have an idea what she might need to hear.

And then she kisses Hjarka, because the world hasn't ended completely yet, and Tonkee doesn't want to wait until it has.

XXX

_This is the way the world ends—_ with a child in mourning, and a friend turned to stone, and the possibility of rebirth on the horizon.

The Stone Eaters come before the food runs out. They speak mainly with Nassun, but when they leave the vehimals are running, prepared to take their small company home.

Hjarka kisses Tonkee fiercely when they find out, and the two of them hold each other tight through the silent night that follows, neither quite daring to vocalize plans that might still be stolen away.

XXX

_This is the way the world could end._

As they approach Rennanis, Tonkee tries not to worry about what they might find. They've been gone for months—far longer than they thought they would be. The world has changed. There is a moon in the sky. Father Earth has quieted. A child chose not to destroy everything.

But the people they left behind... the orogenes... the stills...

They are hailed at the gate, greeted as old friends, and Tonkee relaxes a little bit.

They enter, and one of the orogene children that Essun taught smiles at them shyly while another child runs to find Ykka. (They will have to tell Ykka that both Lerna and Essun are gone. They will have to watch Ykka mourn, realizing what ended while she couldn't see. But for now there is an orogene child, and for Essun's sake Tonkee tries to give the child her full attention.) "I sessed you coming. Warned them there were people, and got the number right."

Nassun stands at the center of their little group, protected, her wary eyes darting this way and that before finally settling on the girl. "You sessed? You're..."

"A rogga. Orogene. Whatever." The girl flicks a hand dismissively. "It's good to have you all back! So much has happened..."

Others begin to approach as the child begins a mish-mash summation of what's changed and what hasn't in the time they've been gone.

Nassun stares up at Tonkee, the stump of her wrist cradled by her other hand. "They haven't killed each other."

Tonkee smiles, honest relief in the expression. "They haven't. And they haven't been killed, and everyone looks healthy."

Nassun looks around again. "Do you think it will last?"

Tonkee shrugs. "I don't know. But I think it has a chance... and really, that's worth an awful lot in the end, don't you think?"

Nassun doesn't nod, but she doesn't contradict Tonkee either, and perhaps that's all the hope that they need right now.

XXX

_This is the way the world ends—_ in sorrow, in death, in loss and grief and despair and destruction.

And this is the way the world heals—in fits and starts, in steps taken forward and ground loss. In children's tears and children's choices, and Tonkee hopes, as she holds Hjarka close that night, that Nassun never comes to regret her decision.

XXX

_This is the way the world starts:_

With a child returned to Father Earth, and a community shaped by desperate need.

With hope. With love.

With sacrifice. With sorrow.

This is the way the world begins, may it never be for the last time.


End file.
